Pages

Thursday, November 21, 2013

First there was the Twilight franchise. Four YA novels by Stephenie Meyer adapted into five screenplays by one screenwriter -- Melissa Rosenberg, whose only prior feature writing credit was Step Up. The movies made more than $1.3 billion.

As that golden goose reached its golden years, Summit moved on to The Hunger Games. Three YA novels by children's television writer Suzanne Collins (Clarissa Explains It All, Wow! Wow! Wubbzy!), turned into four films.

Suzanne Collins

Collins shares a screenwriting credit on the first movie, but after she turned in her first draft, Summit decided to bring in an A-list lineup of talent to revise that script and draft the next three.

Billy Ray (Captain Phillips, Breach) came on board first. Ray added a subplot with Gale breaking into the Capitol during the Games to persuade Haymitch to get off his drunk ass and help Katniss. Obviously, none of this ended up being used.

The script tells the true story of The New Republic journalist Stephen Glass (Hayden Christensen), who turns in dozens of phony articles while his editor (Peter Sarsgaard) is forced to claw through a web of deceit to find out why an online competitor has found so many mistakes in one of his articles. Soon, the lies come crashing down around him like the districts taking down President Snow.

Ray's work on The Hunger Games was rewritten by the film's director, Gary Ross, best known for writing and directing Pleasantville (1998), about a town revolting against oppressive black-and-white attitudes. Ross was nominated for Oscars for three of his screenplays: Seabiscuit, Dave, and Big.

The son of Oscar-nominated screenwriter Arthur A. Ross (Brubaker), Gary wrote Big with his neighbor, Anne Spielberg (Steven's sister). The quintessential wish-fulfillment tale of a boy whose wish to become a grown-up comes true was the first feature writing credit for both scribes.

Ross opted out of The Hunger Games sequels, so the job of adapting the second novel, Catching Fire, went to British screenwriter Simon Beaufoy. Like Ross, Beaufoy was Oscar-nominated for his first produced feature script, The Full Monty (1997). He shared another nomination with filmmaker Danny Boyle in 2011 for 127 Hours after winning the gold for his adapted script for Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire.

This unlikely box office hit tells the life story of a young man (Dev Patel) from the slums of Mumbai in non-linear flashbacks to show how he comes to know the answers to a set of quiz show questions that are about to make him a millionaire. An epic love story is skillfully woven through the complex narrative.

Beaufoy's work on Catching Fire was then handed off to Michael Arndt. An Academy Award winner for his first produced screenplay, Little Miss Sunshine, Arndt followed up his triumphant debut with a nomination for his second script, Toy Story 3.

Picking up eleven years after the previous sequel, Andy heads off to college. Left behind, the toys end up at a daycare center where they take a beating from rambunctious toddlers. Like the citizens of District 12, their situation worsens but, as always, they are able to team up to set things right. Arndt delivered it all in a script that reduced many grown men to tears.

Tapped to pen both The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1 and The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2 is former Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Gilmore Girls, and Mad Men actor Danny Strong. No stranger to writing about the type of political gamesmanship found in Panem, Strong had a hit with Lee Daniels' The Butler, a chronicle of the Civil Rights movement told through the eyes of a long-term White House servant, and scored back-to-back Emmys for his pair of HBO political docu-dramas, Recount and Game Change, covering the 2000 and 2008 U.S. presidential elections, respectively.

The extraordinarily convoluted case of Bush v. Gore captivated the divided nation for 35 days in late 2000. Eight years later, Strong's teleplay recounted the events, taking us behind the scenes, distilling the many misunderstood details, and capturing the compelling drama of the game.

Friday, November 15, 2013

Sometimes it's a literal one, with the protagonist traveling great distances by car, bus, train, foot, horseback, covered wagon, kayak, or any combination of thereof, often thrown together with their last choice of traveling companions, enduring many unexpected hardships along the way, and ultimately learning more than they'd bargained for.

Here are five great "road movies" you may have missed.

CROSSROADS (1986): A classically trained guitarist (Ralph Macchio, The Karate Kid) with a yen for the blues hobos from Julliard to Mississippi in search of a legendary lost song by bluesman Robert Johnson. He is accompanied by Johnson's last surviving bandmate, Willie Brown (Joe Seneca), who is desperate to get back to the Delta to undo a deal he'd made with the devil at the crossroads of his youth. Along the way, Jami Gertz (The Neighbors) teaches the younger musician the true meaning of the blues. Directed by Walter Hill (The Warriors, 48 hrs.) and written as a student screenplay by John Fusco at NYU, the film is often confused with the unrelated, same-named Britney Spears vehicle from 2002.

THE FRISCO KID (1979): Willy Wonka and Han Solo team up as an incompetent Polish rabbi making his way across 1850s America to deliver a torah to a congregation in San Francisco and a hard-edged bank robber navigating him through treacherous Indian territory. Originally intended as a John Wayne vehicle, the comedy-Western, directed by Robert Aldrich (The Dirty Dozen), stars Gene Wilder and Harrison Ford, with a script by the writers of Black Bart (a failed TV pilot spin-off of Blazing Saddles).

KALIFORNIA (1993): David Duchovny (The X-Files, Californication) stars as a journalist who takes his photographer girlfriend (Michelle Forbes) on a cross-country tour of infamous murder sites as they collaborate on a book on serial killers. To cut costs, they ride-share with Early Grayce (Brad Pitt) and his girlfriend (Juliette Lewis), unaware their passenger is himself a psychotic serial killer. Written by Tim Metcalfe (Revenge of the Nerds), the R-rated thriller was directed by Dominic Sena (Gone in Sixty Seconds).

THE LUCKY ONES (2008): A trio of U.S. soldiers coming home from Afghanistan, two on leave, the other at the end of his tour, are thrown together when a shortage of rental cars at JFK forces them to rideshare across the country. Director and co-writer Neil Burger (Limitless, Divergent) uses the opportunity to capture a snapshot of America's varied attitudes toward the war at the time. With three beautifully developed characters played by Tim Robbins (The Shawshank Redemption), Michael Peña (Crash), and Rachel McAdams (The Time Traveler's Wife, About Time), this character-driven gem was overshadowed by The Hurt Locker, which was released the same year.

THE MOTORCYCLE DIARIES (2004): A young medical student and his best friend set off to see the world on a broken-down motorcycle in 1950s South America. Along the way they look for love, explore Incan ruins, and visit a leper colony. Based on the true adventures of Ernesto "Che" Guevara (Gael Garcia Bernal), who would later become a leader in the Cuban Revolution, and Alberto Granado (Rodrigo de la Serna), the story's diarist, the film was directed by Walter Salles (On the Road), won an Oscar for its score by Jorge Drexler, and was nominated for its screenplay by José Rivera.

Wednesday, November 13, 2013

This Friday, ALEXANDER PAYNE releases his fourth consecutive road movie. Does that make him King of the Road?

Here's his cinematic itinerary:

ABOUT SCHMIDT (2002): Newly retired and widowed protagonist Jack Nicholson travels from Omaha to Denver in a Winnebago in an attempt to stop his daughter’s wedding.

SIDEWAYS (2004): Paul Giamatti and Thomas Hayden Church are former college buddies who drive from San Diego to Santa Ynez on a final wine-tasting adventure before one of them has to tie the knot.

THE DESCENDANTS (2011): George Clooney stars as a haole lawyer who goes island hopping with his teenage daughter (Shailene Woodley) on a wild goose chase to track down and bring his dying wife’s lover back to Oahu before her funeral.

The black-and-white film is quickly gaining Oscar buzz. All three of Payne’s previous road trips earned nominations for their travelers (Nicholson, Kathy Bates, Church, Virginia Madsen, and Clooney) and the last two both won Best Adapted Screenplay trophies. Dern, 77, was previously nominated 35 years ago for Coming Home.

Thinking of sending your protagonist on a holoholo? Read the scene-by-scene analysis of Payne's second Oscar-winning script for valuable screenwriting tips.

Friday, November 8, 2013

Every scene in a screenplay should have conflict. That doesn't mean every scene needs a knock-down, drag-out fisticuffs or shootout. But how else do we show conflict visually, without relying on some dialogue-heavy, verbal shouting match?

Here is a scene from Brian De Palma's CARRIE (1976). The scene contains no dialogue, very little movement, and almost no interaction between the two actors. Yet, clearly we can see two opposing emotions at play.

This brief scene occurs shortly after the film's midpoint. Carrie has just defied her mother for the first time in her life. She has decided she will go to the prom, against her mother's wishes, then revealed her telekinetic powers to demonstrate precisely how she intends to enforce this shift in power. "Things are gonna change around here," Carrie says.

Moments later, we see this shot of Margaret praying in the foreground, juxtaposed with Carrie sewing her prom dress in the background. This is a reversal of an earlier scene where Margaret sat at her sewing machine while she forced Carrie to pray in a closet.

Carrie's action here represents her anticipation of the dance. Her mother's opposing action shows fear of what will happen at that same dance. The scene shows two characters with conflicting points of view on the same subject without dialogue or movement. Their actions are at odds with each other, in the same frame.

ScripTipps TIP: An event often occurs at a screenplay's midpoint that changes the balance of power between the hero and villain.

ScripTipps TIP: Write a reversal scene that turns the tables on two characters' positions from an earlier scene.

ScripTipps TIP: Conflict can be shown visually, even in a scene with no dialogue and very little movement.

Tuesday, November 5, 2013

How does going to a prestigious film
school help you break into the industry? Is it ever too late to start
down that path? What happens when you get there?

Steve Boman shares his answers to these
questions in his 2011 memoir, FILM SCHOOL, from the perspective of an
outsider who overcame high-stakes obstacles to beat the odds.

A self-described Midwestern family man
with no filmmaking experience, Boman uprooted his life in his 40s to
pursue a graduate degree from the USC School of Cinematic Arts.

His tome fills in the details,
semester-by-semester, of the hard work and politics required to
survive in this environment that mimics the entertainment business.

“Here’s the bottom line, the dirty
truth about film school: film school is a constant competition. The
entertainment world has thousands upon thousands of wannabes. The
odds of success are so long that people instinctively gravitate
toward those they think might better their odds.”

Boman was not one of those
odds-strengthening people others gravitated toward, and after his
first semester, he gave up. Two years later, a near-fatal car
accident pushed him back to USC to finish pursuing his dream. Then,
on the morning of his first class, he had a stroke. Told by his
family doctor to return home to Minneapolis for surgery, he decided
to stay and conquer film school once and for all.

And conquer he does. USC regularly
brings in industry pros to work with their students. This is how Ted
Gold, former head of FOX’s drama division, heard Boman’s practice
pitch for an original series based on his pre-film-school life as an
organ transplant coordinator.

That pitch became THREE RIVERS. The
pilot was shot six weeks before Boman graduated USC. Though it lasted
only half a season on CBS, final act of the book takes us through the
show’s gestation step by step, from finding a show runner to
battling a hundred other pilots for a thirteen-episode order.

When you hear about a freshman showgetting canceled, you consider the show a failure. As this last
section of FILM SCHOOL illustrates, every show that makes it to air
has already won a marathon on a long, winding, and treacherous
course.

FILM SCHOOL is a must-read road-map for
anyone embarking on the USC journey and anyone curious about how to
successfully pitch and sell a TV series from outside the industry.

Not having read the screenplay, there was a different scene I would have guessed had not been part of the initial drafts. At one point, Phillips leaps out of the lifeboat in a daring escape attempt. It's an exciting, unexpected, danger-filled moment. But ultimately, he ends up right back where he started. The sequence delivers thrills, but accomplishes nothing story-wise, like a musical stopping for a song, or the Wolfpack in The Hangover taking a complete detour from the plot to return an angry tiger to its owner.

Captain Phillips is the protagonist, or "hero," of the movie. For the second half of the movie, this hero is mostly an immobile hostage. He takes a back seat while the Navy swoops in and rescues him, as dictated by the facts of the real-life events. His hands are tied, literally. The hero doesn't get to participate in solving his problem.

In this situation, it would make perfect sense to insert an action beat into the story to let the star act heroically, even if the end result must put him back into position for some other force to take the final steps in saving him.

ScripTipps TIP: In a story that demands someone else save the hero, give the hero a moment of his own to act heroically before putting him back into position for the final climax.

ScripTipps TIP: Set pieces sometimes can be inserted or removed from a script without affecting the plot, like songs in a musical.

As it turns out, a quick perusal of the book A Captain's Duty, the source material for the screenplay, shows the underwater set piece really did happen so it most likely did appear in every draft of the script. Nevertheless, it presents a useful screenwriting lesson (dictated by life, in this case) in writing an active, heroic hero.